Welcome to the world of work. Arts and conversations about art

[webcowgirl]

Let's see - 197 messages in my regular inbox, 371 in my "notifications" folder of that inbox, a restrained 39 in the "news and events" sub sub folder. I guess I'm not surprised that the top message is "mailbox over limit."

Work from plane day wasn't as successful as I'd hoped, but progress was made. I was a little sorry that Woken Furies didn't hold my attention so utterly that I was unable to put it down, but I was able to read the cool article in The Guardian (called "Rules of Engagement") about how censorship, under the view that some things are just to dangerous to be discussed, is moving on to attack the arts, especially performances. The article is almost a month old, but I found it just fascinating, and the leisure to read through nearly thirty pages of arts coverage was just too juicy to pass up, so I leapt in whole-heartedly and read it and many, many other things.

This all dovetailed very nicely with a conversation shadowdaddy and I had last night about the nature of the artistic experience. We both seem to feel that the value isn't in the seeing of the art, it's about the discussions you can have about it after - about the metaphors of hand-placed feet in a dance, about the relationship of character A in play Alpha to character B in story Beta, about the way an author's politics (or historical existence) affects his work. He and I are very lucky in that we've seen so much stuff together we've developed a tremendous working dialogue on Art, a vocabulary and shared history that sadly means very few people can converse with us at the same level of, as it were, fandom. This means it's aways a treat to find new people out there who want to hold these conversations, who want to "geek on art" with us. So we geeked merrily last night, and, I think, given that he's home sick on the couch today and will have time to read this article (if only I could get some of the English historical references without the benefit of Google!) today, we will probably geek out more tonight, shortly before I collapse into jet-lagged exhaustion, feeling my soul tugging at me from 4000 miles away as it slowly tries to find its way back into my body. (And that, my droogs, is William Gibson infecting my writing, for he has given me a metaphor that has filtered into my world-view, bless his little black heart.)

Comments

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

Just sent quite important email to your gmail address xxx

[purplenimue.livejournal.com]

Being at Dell'Arte was a whole year of geeking out and creating at the same time. Brilliant!

Theatre is a damn powerful medium for the conversations it inspires, the worlds it creates and the people it brings together.

[andthenbuyfood.livejournal.com]

That article from the Guardian was really amazing and interesting. Oh, to be a fly on the wall for your discussion of it! I've found that this is what I've missed, very much, in moving from one place to another and re-starting the making of friends process -- having people around who have, like you say, enough of a shared history of events and experiences in arts/reading/music that we can converse on a certain level. I envy you your sparring/discussing/geeking partner!

Thanks for the good read, though.